Children are great. I mean, they are the future. They’re made of sugar and spice and shit. They give your life meaning. At least, that’s what people tell 29 year olds who haven’t gotten around to procreating yet.

Kids are delightful, and adorable. But they’re also difficult. You have to teach them eeeeeverything. They always get it wrong at first. This might sound harsh, but it’s true. Potty training, shoe tying, not leaving Lego on the floor…honestly it takes forever. But eventually they get it, and you both get to feel an overwhelming sense of pride and accomplishment that the childless can only dream of.

Then the kid smacks you in the face and laughs.

Discipline. It’s not easy. But there are ways to not be terrible at it.

There are more than two options, for starters. From what I hear from lots of people, you are either whipping your child with an extension cord while she kneels on rice (I’m sorry, I know it’s “cultural,” but that is sadistic and a waste of a good starch) or letting them run the streets, pick their own bedtime, and asking them if they need a timeout for doing heroin at the kitchen table.

You are allowed to discipline your kids. You’re even allowed to spank your kids. Parents have given their toddlers a swat on the butt while I was in the room, even. It’s ok. If you’re resorting to spanking when the kid is a teenager, something’s gone wrong, and you’ll find it not working and pretty weird, but still.

You are allowed to discipline your kids. You’re not allowed to beat your kids with objects. You’re not allowed to leave marks and bruises. I’ve said this before, but I’m saying it again because it never seems to get through and I will get at least one comment complaining about how you’re not allowed to discipline your kids. You’re allowed to discipline your kids.

A lot of the parents I work with got hit as kids. When they’re really honest, they acknowledge that it wasn’t a whole lot of fun, or particularly effective. But they usually say it was just what they needed. “I was running the streets at 14, fighting and getting arrested, so yeah my mother beat me.” Good point. But she’d been beating you since you were two, and this behavior didn’t stop until you were 23, so…

Parents we work with usually recognize that they need to stop hitting their kids. Because it’s gotten out of control, because the kids have outgrown it, because they don’t want another case, whatever. Learning new ways isn’t easy, though.

Before you ask, no, I don’t have kids. But outside perspective is valuable. Sometime you get so caught up in the day to day battles (we’re all picking those battles, right?) that you need a reminder. Also one taken groups of fifteen to twenty adolescents to the mall and the zoo, by myself, and never lost one. So I do know some things. And sometimes, people just have to be open to common sense.

I work with teenagers who have been “grounded” for months. It either starts out way too harsh–you came home at 4:15 instead of 4? No leaving the house for two months!–or it starts out reasonable and time gets added on. “Oh, you rolled your eyes at me? That’s three more weeks!” It gets to a point where the kid an the parent can’t remember what the kid did wrong. It’s just the status quo–this person is only allowed to go to school and come home. At that point, this is not an adolescent, it’s a maximum security prisoner with nothing left to lose. Parents ask me all the time, “well, she’s already not allowed to do anything, so what am I supposed to take away?” Hmmm…perhaps this is the problem?

Time outs and sticker charts get a shitty reputation. A time out is “soft.” It’s not real discipline! Who cares about sitting in a chair for a few minutes? People who say this, of course, have never seen a three year old attempt to sit for THREE WHOLE MINUTES.

The thing that really gets me, though, is that parents try to get too creative. There’s usually a reason you tell your kids to do something. Leave your sidewalk chalk outside? Yeah, it probably won’t be in good shape tomorrow. Insist on fighting sleep? Ok, you’re gone be hella tired when I still get you up on time for school tomorrow. Refuse your coat? Oh yeah, it IS cold out now that you mention it. You want to lay on the sidewalk and have a fit instead of walking with us? Ok, bye! My my my, but you caught up quick.

Obviously this doesn’t work with lessons like staying out of the street, or that Windex is not as delicious as it looks, but natural consequences go a long way.

So does treating kids like functioning humans. If you want to do something, you have to earn it. It’s a valuable skill to teach your kids. A friend at a 30th birthday said out loud, “I’m going to eat some salad, that way I can have chips.” Don’t you think it all the time? “I’ll clean the bathroom, then I can watch Orange is the New Black before everyone on Twitter reveals all.”

No, your social worker doesn’t know all. There’s no magic discipline cookbook, or everyone would follow it and we would bake a cake out of rainbows and smiles. You know your kid best. But if what you’re doing isn’t working, it’s best to at least be open to suggestion. Sometimes we make sense, even if we don’t have kids.

Confession time: I have Christmas spirit. Always have, and I hope I always will. I like the cheesy music, I like the gaudy lights, I like the predictable movies. Everything about it. As a kid, Santa was a big part of that.

Actually, Santa is still a big part of that. Twenty eight years young, people!

I believed in Santa until I was about eight. I had my suspicions earlier, but I persevered because I wanted to. It was fun. Sure, Santa had the same handwriting as my mom, and a lot of my Christmas gifts had tags from Sorrelli’s, her favorite discount store in Brooklyn that no self respecting elf would ever set foot in. I read Judy Blume books in which Peter and Fudge discussed the fact that there was no Santa. I heard my parents going in and out of the attic, where the presents were kept, when I was supposed to be asleep on Christmas Eve, and the only explanation I was offered was, “Oh, yeah, we…yeah.”

But I still believed. Why? Kids are stupid. Like I said, I wanted to. It was fun. I wasn’t particularly materialistic, but I had an innate understanding that believing in magic and preserving this ritual was a time limited thing.

I always thought it was sweet. Until I learned about the true horrors of this myth in this article.

JK, peeps. I’m pretty sure that article is the definition of “overthinking it,” and exactly what people worry I had to deal with when they find out my mother is a psychologist.

It’s something I’ve heard debated more and more. Should you support the Santa myth? Isn’t lying wrong? As almost always, I advocate for the middle ground. I think the real danger is when people fall into these “beliefs” or “schools” of parenting. It leaves little room for logic and dealing with things on a case by case basis.

Some people get all high and mighty about not “lying” to their children. Fine, I won’t lie to them either. I feel bad for the next child who hands me an art project! “Kid, you have zero sense of perspective and proportion. That picture of your grandmother looks more like a pineapple. It’s called shading.”

Not to mention, Santa is a cultural phenomenon. He’s everywhere. It’s not a damaging lie, like “that boy is teasing you because he likes you!” or even such an outright one as, “No, SJ, the toy store is closed.”

But some people go overboard. Remember what I said about the middle ground? If you are policing what your child reads and watches to make sure they don’t hear anyone expressing any doubt about my good buddy Kris Kringle, then maybe it’s time to relax. And if your kids are unholy terrors unless you threaten to call Santa, or because Shingles the Shelf Elf is watching, they probably need to have little more respect for your authority.

Side note: If my parents had an Elf on a Shelf when I was a kid, I too would have been on my best behavior. Because I would have thought it was waiting to murder me.

It seems like the more money people have, the more time they have to blow this out of proportion. Either they will protect the Santa myth to such an extreme that they have to sit Junior down before the grandchild’s first Christmas so he doesn’t expect reindeer to deliver the gifts, or they lay the smackdown on magic and provide strategies for investment banking while the child is still swaddled.

Most of my families have more of a relaxed approach. It makes me sad, though, that a lot of the kids stop believing so early, thanks to the harsh realities of life. Their parents don’t have the money to pull it off how they’d like and tell the kid not to be disappointed, mom asks for help setting up the Santa surprise for the younger kids as there is no older adult around…there’s just less time to be a child lost in a fantasy world.

So I like it when the kids are into it. Even if it will surely lead to distrust and incsecure attachment is super dorky.

A couple of years ago, I called a mother to let her know that the Christmas presents we had for her seven year old son just arrived. She came in with him, as there was no one available to babysit. She pulled me aside to say, “I told him that Santa was really busy, so he dropped the presents off here early.”

“SJ, my mom said Santa was here! Did you meet him?”
“I did. It was amazing. He shook my hand twice and he smells of peppermint. I’m so sorry you missed him!”

While I’m sure I did that child irrevecable psychological damage, it was pretty fun for the day.

Happy holidays, people!

*This is a joke that is only funny to my older brother and me. I hope this is a sufficient Christmas gift to him.

I’ve mentioned that my job confuses people a bit. They often don’t really have a clue what we do, and assume that we’re some sort of borderline useless combination of caseworker and friendly visitor. I don’t really care if people on the street, or my Facebook feed (you know, the modern street) think this. Well, I kind of care, but I know it really doesn’t matter. However, when judges don’t get it, then we have an issue.

Family court doesn’t seem to have a whole lot of respect for what I do. Saying that a family has been working with us for the past year on addressing their history of domestic violence, and on empowering the mother to assert herself as a parental figure, is pretty much met with blank stares. “What have you actually done?” The implication being, of course, that we’ve been sitting around chatting. A ten week parenting class, though, often means a check mark and a case closed.

Family court loves things that they can tally up and tick off “attended nine out of twelve sessions.” It’s like you can determine how good a parent someone is by their attendance percentage. What I do, the longer term family counseling is too abstract.

I’ve figured it out. It’s the certificate.

Certificates are a powerful thing. I mean, I got up an hour early three days a week at Girl Scout camp to go swimming in a cold Long Island pond, just to get a “Polar Bear Club” certificate. (I assume it’s still in a large Tupperware bin in my parents’ basement.)

I use them for my girls’ group now. Kids are really excited to have something that they can show off and hang up that indicates their achievement. It’s printed on nice paper in fancy font. Parents who didn’t complete school, I find, are also particularly into them. The ones who are the happiest about them, though, are people who have been in “the system” for a long time. Their kids have been in and out of foster care, they’ve been mandated to attend drug counseling, parenting classes, domestic violence groups, healthy cooking class, Zumba and whatever else might have been slightly helpful. They know the power of a “certificate of completion” (fuck participation) and have a folder full of them.

I have worked with one family that could be featured in a social work textbook as the quintessential “multi-problem family.” After two looooong years of work, the one thing of value that the courts see is that one of the teenagers completed my girls’ group. Twelve sessions, 75% attendance, certificate sent home and hung on the wall. Yay. It’s the only certificate they’ve managed. Never mind the school meetings, the days spent in the hospital, the calls from the police (Scared Straight is a real thing. An ineffective, real thing), referrals for mentoring and psychiatric evaluations, emergency grocery shopping with mom and two toddlers (I’m never doing that again, and you can’t make me!) and weeks of family counseling sessions in whatever room I could cram nine people into. Those things don’t have a curriculum and a clear end point.

As a result of Certificate Focused Practice, we’re being driven to be shorter term and more “evidenced based.” I’m not against our work being evidenced based–if it’s working, we should be able to see evidence, now matter how much we dislike that. But they’re making us do work that only has a bit of evidence and could, in theory, be more evidenced based, which I think just misses the point. And it’s a little automaton-y. It feels like social work in a dystopian future. “Enter problem here. Beep boop beep. Your solution is being processed.”

I hope you read that last bit aloud, in a robot voice.

I’m not anti-certificate. Like I said, I use them in girls’ group. I just think that getting so focused on checking off classes can take away from helping families. Not everything can happen and be fixed in a time limited program. “All right, let’s go through your Lisa Frank folder with the rainbow dolphins on it. Yes, we’ve got paperwork to show you’re a good parent, you don’t drink anymore, and you’re over the abuse you suffered!” Parents always ask “how long is the program?” when first engaging in counseling. That’s really not how effecting meaningful change in a family works, but it’s what they’ve come to expect. If you could attend “family college” and then be great at everything, I’m fairly certain everyone would do it and I’d be out of a job. But families have individual needs and situations, and while classes and group can provide invaluable help, they’re not quite everything.

I don’t have kids. I’ve said it here before, because, as we all know, it matters to some of our clients. I maintain that it doesn’t really matter. Not having kids doesn’t mean you don’t know kids. It doesn’t mean you’ve never taken care of a child, or have children in your life who you love dearly.

But there are some things you can’t entirely understand. One is the feeling of loving someone more than anything, knowing what’s best for them, and sending them out into the world to make mistakes. Another is everyone in the world thinking they know how to parent your child better than you do.

That last one, I can kind of relate to. Ever since I got a dog.

Now, I have no intention of becoming one of those lunatics who refers to myself as my dog’s mommy, or tells people I have a six month old, or requests maternity leave when I bring a pet home. But the fact remains that there are some similarities to life with a dog and life with a baby. I say things like “It’s not time for dinner yet” to someone who doesn’t speak English, my boyfriend and I regularly discuss the timing and location of poops, I feel guilty leaving him at day care, I show coworkers pictures of him doing cute things, I do way more laundry than I thought possible, and I have someone to blame all weird household smells on.

Also, everyone else is an expert.

I admit that I don’t know a whole lot. So I turn to the source of all modern knowledge, the great and powerful Oz Google. (It’s how Jenny McCarthy cured autism, you know.) And right away I’m confronted with guilt. “Your dog is exhibiting signs of separation anxiety. First of all, stop getting angry at him. Think of it from his perspective. He just wants to be with you.” What kind of an asshole do you think I am, Mr. Google? I already feel bad! That’s why I’m here. “If your dog has an accident in the house, do not rub his nose in it.” Yeah, I’m not the mean dad from The Wonder Years. I got it.

There’s also the confusion. To address separation anxiety, we must teach the dog that it’s ok to be away from us. Leave the room, and encourage him to stay behind. To ensure that your dog is entirely housebroken, DO NOT LEAVE HIM ALONE FOR A MOMENT! You must be right there to interrupt any and all accidents. If you miss one, you have no one but yourself to blame. But stop following him around, you’re making his anxiety worse!

There’s little consensus on what you should be doing to raise a happy, healthy dog. This person says you need a choke collar. That person says they’re damaging. Everyone has an Invisible Fence, so that seems like the way to go. Except this expert says that’s a move for lazy assholes. Apparently we should feed him fresh chicken once a week? Oh wait, only if we want terrible things to happen to him. Dog food or no food! Crating is good. I mean bad. I mean no more than six four hours?

Then there are people on the street with helpful advice. “You should praise him when he does something good. Give him a little treat.” Well, you should write a book. ” “Tap him on the nose with a newspaper.” Again, is it the 50s? Who has a newspaper? “It’s important for them to socialize.” With your yippy, feral, biting machine? No thanks. “He’s so skinny. Maybe you should feed him more.” Was that on Animal Planet?

I know that if I mention anything about how we train or care for the dog, someone will disagree and be able to tell me how I’m irrevocably harming him. I mean, his treats aren’t locally grown or organic, so they’re probably right.

This is a fraction of what new parents are faced with. If you’re single, a teenager, or a father, forget it. Obviously you know nothing.

Most people seem incapable of determining what a “safety issue” that requires intervention really is. Parents playing a round of Baby Tetherball is dangerous. An infant being bottle fed in public is not.

Other young parents have a million must-haves for an expectant mother. “How many Boppys do you have? You got the Bumbo as well, right? Those are amazing. Just don’t leave the kid unattended, or she will die instantly. Also get the vibrating chair. And a walker, but if you put her in it too soon she’ll become bowlegged and hate you forever. Which breast pump are you getting? Why are you getting all those bottles? You will be breastfeeding, right? Only breastfed humans have gone on to happiness and success, it’s scientifically proven. You also need the video monitor! Obviously you won’t have any blankets or anything in her crib, but you need this too, so you can make sure she’s breathing all night.”

OK, Babies R Us cashier. Can we just finish checking out and get back to being strangers?

The generation that raised us is great for making new parents feel stupid. “Ok, I didn’t have six special chairs for you before you could sit up, or a baby monitor, but sure, that’s a necessity” as the eyes roll. It’s true, but at some point things change and we need to deal with it. I don’t hear any of those grandmothers pining for the days of outhouses or maxi-pads with belts, so we need to accept some progress.

And some of those innovations are ridiculous, of course. Wipe warmers spring to mind. No baby has ever died of Chilly Tush Syndrome, so I think we would be fine without one. But we have to consider it from the point of view of someone who is excited to be expecting a child, and is then confronted with everything that will go wrong and kill your baby. SIDS is everywhere! You’re probably passing along pertussis through hugs! But vaccinations cause autism!

Everything a pregnant woman or a person with a baby does seems to be up for debate. Most of my clients don’t have the luxury of a million different items to make their lives more convenient, or even to make their child’s life a bit easier. But they certainly get to enjoy everyone on the planet telling them how they could be doing things better.

Many moms, especially young ones, get it from their mothers or grandmothers. Not that they don’t appreciate the help, but they want it to be clear who the parent is. They get it from their friends who have been through it. They hear it from politicians who talk about single and teenage mothers receiving welfare as the latest sign of the apocalypse.

And of course they get it from us.

We don’t want to be that way. We try really hard not to undermine parents, assume they don’t know basic, obvious stuff. We even get a bit defensive when it seems that clients assume that we’re like this. But the fact that they expect us to be hypercritical makes perfect sense. We need to remember that we’re the latest in a long line of people who seem to think that they know better, and how annoying and frustrating that is to deal with.

People sometimes complain that I don’t write enough about fathers. They don’t complain that I don’t write enough about giraffes, which is strange, as giraffes are another awesome creature that I only see very occasionally. As Father’s Day approaches, I’m considering it more.

There just aren’t many dads on my caseload. I am currently at an all time high with dads, as three out of my twelve families, 25%, have a father involved. My wacky director talked to us during one ritual suicide staff meeting about the “myth of the absentee father.” Her point was that even when the fathers aren’t there, their presence still matters. OK, I agree. Her other point was that we need to be seeking out dads more often. Easy to say when you aren’t in the field anymore. Believe me, I ask. So where are they?

Some are far far away-they’ve moved out of state, and contact is limited to an occasional phone call at most. The move is frequently accompanied by a new family, and that is kind of that.

A lot of our families have histories of domestic violence, meaning that the dads are often legally prohibited from seeing the mothers, and at times the children. (Definitely for the best when you’ve threatened to kill your children and their mother.)

And some dads are not too far away, but they’re just not around. They’re not interested, or they’re not consistent. Obviously plenty of the mothers I work with fall short of their parental responsibilities. But there’s a difference in how the men and women I see experience finding out that they’ll be having a baby. For the mother, it’s real in that moment. For the father, it’s hit or miss.

The thing is, most of the men I work with don’t have a better idea of how to be a father. If your own personal example of a father is someone who you see only occasionally, who breaks promises and doesn’t support you and your family, it’s a struggle to do something different. Even if you know it made you feel terrible.

But we all know that some people do the hard work of making changes and breaking cycles. My father’s example of a dad had a lot to do with supporting the family financially, and drinking in the basement. (The laundry was always done!) Yet my dad managed to be way better than every other dad. Including yours, sorry.

Yeah, let me pick up you and your friends from that ska show in Jersey at 1 am, no problem. Your little league team needs someone to pitch, because we don’t have a tee and five year olds can’t throw? Awesome, I’m in. The man genuinely enjoyed Girl Scout father-daughter dances. He had a true knack for making social studies interesting, and was by far the best at playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. (Also, he reads my blog regularly. Hi, Dad!)

There are some dads who, like mine, didn’t have the best example of how to be a good father. Or had much worse. But something made them decide to go above and beyond, and be amazing dads.

There is one single father on my caseload. He recently took his teenage daughter and her cousin to see “Think Like a Man” to facilitate a discussion on romantic relationships. Sure, that discussion contained the line, “most boys are just trying to get at your cookies,” but the man gets credit for trying.

The father of an eight year old boy realized he wasn’t spending enough time with his kid, so he managed to secure an extra ticket to ComicCon. It was a surprise. The boy walked into a room full of superheroes and his head exploded.

A proud, and I mean proud father of six told me about the family’s recent trip to the Botanical Gardens. And then showed me pictures…and pictures…and pictures. His wife was telling him, “SJ doesn’t want to see all of them!” while he scrolled through to the last one, because, “look, they’re so cute.” They were pretty cute.

A father of seven who somehow managed to get our entire office, staff and clients alike, engaged in singing Christmas carols at the holiday party. (The moment was ruined when I attempted an “O Holy Night” solo.)

During one home visit, the father of a three year old girl painstakingly painted his daughter’s nails throughout our conversation. He was also a really good sport when it was his turn. Sparkly pink was totally his color.

Fatherhood is tricky. It seems dads are either labeled idiots or saints. Single dads are cheered as heroes in a way single moms rarely get. But it’s also pretty insulting when people act like you couldn’t possibly know how to take care of your own child, or ask if you’re “babysitting.” (People apparently actually say that to fathers about their kids. Gross.)

We’re always analyzing what role fathers play in this work. Why aren’t there more involved fathers? What do we do to change this? How can we teach boys the importance of being an involved parent? Who is going to teach the next generation about cheesy jokes if they don’t have dads?! Sometimes, it’s nice to take a break from that and celebrate the good.

Very often, families end up working with us when entirely normal developmental tasks go wrong. Essentially, kids are designed to be a pain in the ass in a variety of different ways throughout their lives. If parents aren’t ready for this, they might handle it badly enough that they need some outside help. Infants are supposed to scream. Toddlers are supposed to have tantrums and occasionally pee on the floor. Teens are supposed to test boundaries. Not understanding this contributes to shaken babies, toddlers smacked around during potty training, and mothers insisting that someone take their teenage daughters and return them when they’re back to normal.

Since I started this work, I’ve been particularly fascinated by the relationships between moms and their teenage daughters. Those are a writer’s goldmine. (Ask Judy Blume. Or whoever did “Thirteen.”) It’s a fascinating mess, almost every time. And almost every time, it catches us by surprise.

Every mother I work with is astonished by what an ungrateful little bitch her teenager has turned into, seemingly over night. As always, we look for patterns in the family. “What was your relationship with your mom like when you were 15?” Inevitably, it was terrible. The mother’s mother was unsupportive,didn’t listen, treated her daughter like a slave…the mothers I’m working with think they’re doing a better job, and can’t understand why this didn’t prevent nightmare teenagerdom. I mean, my daughter doesn’t have to do everyone’s laundry like I did, and I don’t beat her with an extension cord! What more do kids these days want?

I’m always struck by this. Don’t they ever think back on the dramatic thoughts and journal entries they kept as teenagers and cringe? Do they remember how seriously they took everything that came to their friends and popularity, or the stupid nonsense that made them laugh until they snorted? Didn’t they ever read Judy Blume?!

Working with teenagers, I spend a lot of time relating to them. I reflect on myself as a teenager more than “normal” adults–you know, those people who spend a majority of their time with people their own age. Not to mention the whole writer thing. Writers are notoriously weird and reclusive introspective and observant, so I wind up writing about teen characters a lot. The two kind of feed into each other. Not to mention the fact that I don’t have a teenager at this point. As much as my teenage cousins have put me through the ringer once or twice, it’s not quite the same.

So I remember, I think better than a lot of people, the turmoil and agony that accompanies mundane, normal stuff when you’re a teenager. Are my friends hanging out without me? Why did my “best friend” tell that guy that I liked him? Now I look like an idiot and I can never leave the house again! This is just the normal stuff. Throw in abuse, homelessness, mental illness, and shit gets real quite quickly.

I’m only telling you this because I feel this is a safe space. High school SJ had a journal entry that contained the line “we’re not allowed to be in love.” Ugh. Everything I did was so dramatic and flamboyant. It just makes me want to set myself on fire.

It sounds so silly now. But when you’re living it, it’s of the utmost importance, and the only thing that makes it worse is being told how ridiculous you’re being.

My mom and I had a rough relationship when I was a teenager. I was a nightmare, and she was personally insulted by what a nightmare I was being to her. Par for the course. Dr. Mom was aware of this, which helped, but that didn’t make it all that much easier when the kid who last year begged for you to play Clue with her all of a sudden is mortified by everything you do.

She picked me up from junior high one time, and rolled down the window and screamed from across the street, “SJ! Over here!” I must be the messiah, readers, because I died. Actually died. And rose again. What to her was a nice thing to do–not making me walk home when she had a day off, and letting me know she was there–caused me extreme mortification and probably led to a surly silent treatment.

My mother was also a bit distressed by my choice of idols. My undying love for Kurt Cobain said to her, “My child can’t get enough of a suicidal drug addict.” As an adult, I get it. As a kid…oh my. Why couldn’t she understand how much Nirvana spoke to me?

But the thing is, she tried. She really tried to get me. When I managed to obtain all nineteen episodes of My So-Called Life on VHS (you kids with your DVD collections, you have no idea how good you have it) she told me she wanted to watch it with me. And she actually did. When I read The Perks of Being a Wallflower on Christmas Day 1999, and proclaimed I had never related to something so much in my life (I said I was dramatic. I also really wanted to have grown up in the early ’90s) she asked to borrow it, and talked about it with me.

Despite the disapproval of the genuinely stupid things I did, I knew my mom liked me as a person and thought I was an interesting kid. She talked to me like a person, when I allowed it, and defended me to strangers who criticized my purple hair. That went a long way towards me being able to be one of those adults who is friends with my mother, and likes hanging out with my family.

So moms, social workers, countrymen, it’s going to suck. It just is. It comes with the territory. You can’t be your daughter’s friend (not until she’s through college and in her 20s) but you can find things that you genuinely like about her. Even if you have to wrack your brain, the kid has good qualities. The more specific the better. “You’re a good kid” doesn’t mean a whole lot, but “you’re creative and a good baker” does. Taking an interest in the things they like is incredibly important. Not to the point of being a weirdo who doesn’t give your child space and knocks other children out of the way for the last One Direction t-shirt, but in a way that lets your kid know that what matters to them matters to you. One of my chronically crabby thirteen year olds was the happiest girl in the world when her mother took her to see that god forsaken Justin Bieber movie, and actually had a nice time.

It’s worth a try. It really can only get better. And then maybe, when your child is a reflective grown-up, she’ll write a nice blog post about you.

Most of my job is spent trying to meet my clients where they are. However, there are times when things get a little chaotic, crises occur, or a court date is coming up, and we need to meet where no one wants to be–the ACS office.

This office is a thrifty property flippers dream. If there are swamplands in the Bronx, picture them, and that’s where we are. Scenic, and far, far away from that pesky civilization. Inside, the place is rather cheery. Nicely spruced up with grey paint that all social service agencies buy in bulk, as well as many a plastic ficus.

There’s also the playroom, which is separated from the waiting room by plexiglass. It gives me flashbacks to watching the baby chimpanzees at the zoo. Look at him stacking the blocks! He thinks he’s people! Of course, instead of a tire swing, there’s a heavy metal file cabinet.

Kids love those.

I can’t judge, of course (well, I can, I’m really good at it, but I’ll try not to.) Our playroom is just to the left of atrocious. It’s hard. Kids destroy things, and everyone is short on cash.Most social service agencies leave something to be desired in terms of interior design. Anonymous Agency could use a visit from Ty Pennington. No, wait, he blows things up and his hair annoys me. Is that Queer Eye for the Straight Guy dude up to anything? Maybe him.

I get so familiar with the asthetics at this office because most of my time there is spent waiting. Clients often don’t show up. So we wait. We give them time. We’ll give them an hour if we can. I once got a phone call that my client had arrived three hours late, when was back in the office, and was rather miffed that I hadn’t waited. After all, she had traveled all that way.

Hmm….

Waiting can be frustrating. It means your entire day can be thrown off. It might mean that you don’t get to see a family that is really in crisis, or get in a contact with them that you really need.

However, in the grand scheme of things, there are worse things than waiting. Technology certainly makes it easier. Having a smart phone means you don’t get to complain nearly as much. There are crossword puzzles to do, somethings to draw, and fruits to ninja. Oh, we can also type up notes, I guess. I also have a Kindle in my bag, meaning I can laugh inappropriately at Tina Fey if I’m feeling down, or if I just want those around me to think I’m strange. The city is also kind enough to have kids’ movies (like Despicable Me. HEAVEN) playing in the waiting room. Of course, I did once see the shadow of a man’s head, presumably going on a popcorn run, during one of those DVDs. That’s right. They’re a bunch of bootleggers.

There are lots of ways to pass the time. My number one favorite, though, is eavesdropping.

Overheard in the ACS waiting/playroom:

“Elmo, you don’t shape up, Imma punch you in the face.” – 3 y/o to a stuffed animal.
It’s almost like this kid is trying to tell me something. I mean, Elmo can be annoying…

“No, I don’t have to deal with you. We don’t have to talk. This does NOT go beyond today. Good bye!” – Receptionist to Chinese food delivery guy.
That was weird.

“I wear breakaway pants to these things now, so they can check my legs easy!” – 12 year old on the bruise-checking procedure.
Young man, you are depressingly savvy.

“Look! Look! I tied the Barbie’s legs to the bed!” – A random 9 year old, eager to show off his handiwork.
1. So glad you’re not mine.
2. We need to find who is responsible for you.

“I don’t care where we are, I’ll beat your ass.” – A mom I fortunately don’t work with to her five year old.
Come on, I’m sitting right here. Don’t do that.

“But I have to go now. I really do. Can I piss in the cup here and then take it over there?”
“We are taking the bus. What the hell is wrong with you? Wanting to get on public transportation with a cup full of pee. I’m about to let them have you.” – 15 year old and his mother debating the logistics of getting over to the urine drug testing facility.
I’m just going to say that you both have valid points.

“They have me in here like I’m smoking crack. I’m not smoking crack! I’m not a crackhead. At least I’m not smoking crack.” -A mother apparently feeling she was being treated unfairly.
I get this excuse all the time. Most often from people doing cocaine.

There we have it. We’ve got to wait, there’s just no way around it. We’re busy, and we need to scheduled things back to back, but at times we just have to let go and let clients. As long as there are conversations to eavesdrop on, I’ll be all right.